


his arms in this sad knot

by evocates



Series: tempestuous [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Complicated People, Complicated Relationships, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: In Monticello, there was a ghost, and James knew her. She had brown eyes and burnt-sienna curls, a cackling laugh too loud to be polite, and long fingers that looked strange against her petite figure. She had a grace unmatched, half-danced more than she walked, and she would twirl in the middle of the street just because she felt like it. When she smiled…

  Thomas’s world continued to turn.
Mistakes made and scars left by the dead. Coda to a fever of the mad.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt “thomas & james in a relationship dealing with the issue of thomas's late wife. lots of angst pls, but can have a happy ending if you want. bonus cookies if you touch on james's feelings on martha and thomas's feelings for her but you can focus on thomas if you'd like. lots of love for you and your writing” sent by anon on Tumblr.
> 
> Set in the year between Chapter 30 and the epilogues of _a fever of the mad_. Please don’t read this without first reading that fic.

_The king's son have I landed by himself;_  
_Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs_  
_In an odd angle of the isle and sitting,_  
_His arms in this sad knot._  
      _The Tempest_ , Act I Scene 2

 _October 8, Saturday_  
  
In Monticello, there was a ghost, and James knew her. She had brown eyes and burnt-sienna curls, a cackling laugh too loud to be polite, and long fingers that looked strange against her petite figure. She had a grace unmatched, half-danced more than she walked, and she would twirl in the middle of the street just because she felt like it. When she smiled…

Thomas’s world continued to turn.

This tall obelisk didn’t suit her. Too plain, she would have draped it in flowers of clashing colours, giggling to herself at the look on Thomas’s face when he came in and winced at the attack on his aesthetic sensibilities. She would look at James, standing next to him, and suddenly remember his allergies, coming over fussing, asking if he was allergic to pollen even though James had told her what his triggers were more than a dozen times.

He reached out now and traced the name carved on the white marble.

“Hi, Martha.”

The bouquet he held didn’t have colours: lilies, carnations, daisies, roses, and baby’s breath all in white. He laid it down at the foot of the obelisk, and said, “He’s up there in the plantation, doing something pretty important. He knows I’m coming down to see you.”

Maybe he should feel foolish for speaking to the obelisk as if it was her. Martha wasn’t here, wasn’t carved in this dead marble. She was always beside Thomas, a haunting presence as solid as oxygen during asthmatic attacks. Maybe it was foolish for James to hope that she was here.

But he had been holding on to hope, hope he never thought would be fulfilled, for years, and it was hard to let go.

“Sorry I haven’t been visiting. I followed him north, you see, to New York. You didn’t follow him to France, so I thought… Never mind. He always came back to visit you, but I never followed him here. Even the few times I came to Virginia on my own, I didn’t. I think you’ve figured out why by now.”

She has always been clever. She had taken the same entrance examination as Thomas did for the École Normale Superiure, and she had been accepted, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Virginia; hadn’t wanted to leave her father. Martha had always preferred home to everywhere else. 

He should bring up the reason why he was here. But he traced the inscription on the obelisk, remembered the days when the three of them would study _The Iliad_ together, forcing their tongues into Greek shapes, and he couldn’t. He took a deep breath and said, instead:

“Do you remember the very first time you brought me here, to your gardens? You refused to let me go down the path before then, because, you said, there was nothing to see. It was only the second spring, when he was still in Paris, that you brought me here to show me the flowers in full bloom. It was a beautiful day. When you sent the pictures to Thomas, he threw away his studies and flew down here for the weekend.”

That was how they had been: madly in love, finding ways to be together despite their separate wants and desires. Carefree, careless.

James wanted to say that he was sure she remembered. He hoped she did, but it was hope that tasted awfully familiar. He closed his eyes.

And took the plunge.

“You must be pretty mad at me, huh? Spitting furious, I bet.”

If James asked Thomas, he would say that Martha didn’t get angry. But Thomas’s memory of Martha couldn’t be trusted: he loved her too much, lost her too sudden. James remembered.

Her wrath had always run cold, all of her usual vivacious fire turning to ice. A turn of her head, a thinning of the lips. Small hand clenched tight at her side. Martha had never been contained unless she was angry.

He could see her, even now. Sitting in front of him, head turned away. 

“I want to promise that I’ll take care of him, Martha. I want to tell you to not worry, that he’s safe in my hands now. But I can’t. It’s better that I can’t.”

The marble felt nearly as chilly.

“Does that make it worse or better, in your eyes? I can’t figure it out. I’ve been trying to for the past weeks, ever since he told me he was coming here and I asked to follow. But I’ve never figured out what you’re thinking.” 

Not because she was a woman; never that. But Martha had always shone, brilliant and beautiful. She and Thomas, the two bright stars of James’s night-dark world: Thomas of the evening, Martha of the morning.

Martha died in the morning. James killed a part of Thomas in the evening. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come. Maybe now that I’m here, you’ll start haunting me. But… you have always been haunting me, Martha, because you’ve always been haunting him, and I’ve been keeping him close. Too close, I know. Do you know that I know?”

Circles, circles. James dropped to his knees. His fingers brushed over the flowers, caressing the petals of the rose. He plucked one out, rubbing the silkiness of it with his thumb before he let it fall to the grass. 

It laid there, sad and still, over the dull yellow-green of Monticello’s dying late-autumn grass.

James never liked metaphors. The ones that came to him had always been too appropriate.

From here, down below, the obelisk stretched up to the sky, its tip melding with the white clouds floating across the blue. James splayed his hand on the white marble, allowing the chill to sink into his skin to the bone.

“I loved you too, Martha. Not in the way he did, but I did. I don’t think there’s anyone who ever met you who didn’t love you in one way or another. But I wish… I wish now, I didn’t. I wish I could hate you.”

Smiling despite himself, James got to his feet. He didn’t bother to brush off the grass and soil stuck to the knees of his jeans.

“See, he’s a better person now. I hope you can see it too, wherever you are. He’s making me a better person, too, but I… I have never been as blind as he was. Just better at ignoring things what I see.”

Reaching out, he traces her name, remembers her smile. He closes his eyes, and shakes his head.

“I’m not blaming you for my mistakes, my horrors. They are wholly my own. The wounds I have left on Thomas are for me to try to atone, to heal. But…”

Words, full-formed on his tongue. He let them go; let them make it all solid in his mind.

“Martha, I can’t ignore the scars you left. Not anymore.”

There was more he could say. More memories he could recover. But they were all old photographs in his mind, faded in comparison to the sharp-bright memory of Thomas telling him, quiet and nervous, about what he and Martha had used to do together. Thomas laughing, stuttering and half-ashamed without even knowing why.

James knew, the knowledge a heavy stone under his ribs. He couldn’t tell Thomas – Thomas’s shoulders were bowed already under the weight of his burdens – and now…

The weight was still there, and heavier than ever. James wasn’t surprised; he had long known the price of seeing things as they truly were 

Martha was carefree and careless, kind and cruel, passionate and cold. Stars were always best admired from a distance.

Thomas was always so close, and he had been scorched to his bones.

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> I said that I wasn’t going to write fics in this ‘verse for the prompts. I lied. Sorry if this isn’t what you wanted, anon.
> 
> If you’re very confused over this depiction of Martha, I promise that I’m not changing anything from _a fever of the mad._ Everything here is already implied in all of Martha’s appearances and mentions in the fic; all I’m doing here is stating them outright.


End file.
